Fasting is more useful for females
Male and female mice react differently to starvation
Polina Gershberg, Naked Science
Experiments on rodents have shown that individuals of different sexes react differently to the lack of food at the physiological level. So, during a short "fast", female mice accumulated more fat in the liver – but at the same time spent it more efficiently than males. An article about this was published in The Journal of Physiology (Freire et al., Sex‐specific metabolic responses to 6 hours fasting during the active phase in young mice).
Many experts consider fasting and similar practices of food abstinence beneficial to health. However, the data on which products and how long it is worth giving up for different categories of people are debatable. Researchers from the University of Sydney conducted a study in which they found out an important aspect of fasting related to gender.
Scientists forced mice to starve for six hours every night for four weeks. During the experiments, they recorded changes that occurred in the body of rodents. In some aspects, females and males reacted to the lack of food in the same way. In particular, this concerned the increasing food intake after fasting and changes in the size of the liver.
The key gender difference concerned the accumulation and utilization of fat in the liver. After four weeks of regular fasting, the females accumulated more fat in the liver, but subsequently used the "reserves" more effectively. In particular, they had a more active process of lipogenesis – the conversion of acetyl-CoA into fatty acids for the subsequent storage of energy in the form of lipids. In addition, females had lower fasting insulin levels after each six-hour fast.
According to scientists, this suggests that fasting is more beneficial for women's health and affects the likelihood of developing diabetes, chronic hypertension and kidney disease. In addition, the results of the work emphasize intraspecific metabolic inequality between the sexes. The researchers emphasize that these data indicate the need to include representatives of different genders in such studies.
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